Summer Reading - Alaskan

Now available in soft and/or hard cover from your local bookseller!

“How To Design & Construct Anchorage Road Bottlenecks”
by Anonymous State of Alaska DOT Employees

Blurb#1(p.42): “Don’t waste your time designing roads that work, as that would jeopardize your future. And since funding is always available, from Federal matching grants without much fanfare or accountability, just design stuff that doesn’t work in efforts to remedy congestion and must be re-designed. Remember, your job is to create more congestion. The more traffic lights, the funnier this job becomes. Now take the Elmore extension for instance. That new road was designed with failure in mind. It worked, as that project will never end and provide you with work even during a crashing economy. Remember, people must be able to get to work and also the unemployment line.”

Blub#2(p.69): “Always opt for the cheapest of tar based pavement. If the top-coat gets more then 2-seasons, you are not doing your job correctly and jeopardizing a long held tradition. We do not want to do it right the first time, or second time, or….. Remember, “Be a Cheapskate!” This seems to work to our advantage. Just like procuring the cheapest road lane paint that was tested in our state of the art testing lab and lasts no longer then 2 snow-storms, we get the driving public to complain, which means we must take action and thus our drawing boards keep busy with re-work. And since there is no accountability, it doesn’t affect one’s yearly performance appraisal, so you will see a raise in pay regardless of how screwed-up your design becomes. This state of Alaska employee designers job has got to be the best in the category of “Fleecing of America”! And judges thought they held jobs for life?"

Blurb#3(p.123): “With the Recovery Act stimulating the economy with boatloads of money, now is the time to take advantage with possibilities unheard of in the past, even when Ted Stevens was in charge of the Treasury. For instance, we allowed out a contract for cleaning of the artwork along the Elmore extension. So what if the 6-man crew used toothbrushes to accomplish the job. Hey, maybe not “shovel ready” but “brush ready” Hee, hee! Now we could have rented a power-washer, but that would have accomplished the task to quickly. And remember, the more construction signs we rent, the more the driving public gets pissed off. In fact, try to design and schedule several projects in the same area at the same time so drivers get confused and lost in the detour maze. It is a perk of this job, to get people pissed off.”

PS: Real authors unknown or unwilling to admit, so no book signing at this time.